The Debrief: When None of the Words Feel Quite Right

Chanel Dubofsky interviewed me last week for Jewschool. She asked some fun questions that gave me the opportunity to reflect on what this work means to me and what we can keep doing together to open up space for these conversations.

Chanel Dubofsky interviewed me last week for Jewschool. She asked some fun questions that gave me the opportunity to reflect on what this work means to me and what we can keep doing together to open up space for these conversations. The interview is re-posted below. Check out the original here. I’d love to know what you think!

Mimi Arbeit: Progressive values, sex ed and promoting healthy relationships is at the core of my Jewish involvement. My commitment to feminist and queer values is central to who I am as a person and the work I try to do in the world. I became involved with Judaism as a teenager, but departed from Jewish spaces in college when I realized how much the tradition clung to harmful gender norms and patriarchal practices. For years, I didn’t know what to do. Jewish community can be beautiful and powerful, but I needed a Jewish community in which I could bring all of my passions, and in which my own desire for personhood and my commitment to building a better world would not be eclipsed by a reification of problematic Jewish traditions. The communities I found in Boston allowed me to be a part of exploring the kinds of Judaism that hold more possibility for me—especially the Moishe Kavod House, Keshet and JewishBoston.com.

JS: Before writing for The Debrief, you wrote a blog called Sex Ed Transforms. What can we find there?

JS: What do you think is the current state of the conversation about sex in Jewish communities? Why do you think it is what it is? What advice would you give to folks who want to change the status quo?

MA: I can only hope to learn that a wide variety of dynamic, engaging, critical conversations about sex are currently taking place in Jewish communities worldwide. But I also know that many Jewish communities are not having such conversations. I think we are held back because we are nervous, embarrassed, ashamed or afraid, or we don’t know the words to use to express how we feel. We try to say what we think we are supposed to say, and we try to do what we think we are supposed to do, and when we say or do something different from what’s expected of us, we too often get told to stop.

If we want to change the status quo, and I certainly do, we need to start with deep sharing and listening. Really taking risks to hear each other, understand the complexity of our own and each other’s lived experiences, ask caring and probing questions of each other, and speak. Share. Try to explain even when none of the words we know feel quite right. Name that—say that none of the words feel quite right—and commit to speaking and listening anyway.

With the foundation of a community committed to listening and speaking, speaking and listening, we need to pursue conversations that are inclusive of all voices. Wait, not only inclusive, but structured through a model of equity. Working to merely include marginalized voices will still leave those voices marginalized. We need to find a way to actively structure a new conversation about sex and relationships with people who have previously been marginalized now at the center. As part of that process, we will need trauma-informed ways to talk about sex. So many members of our community are survivors of sexual trauma of different forms—more people than we even realize. When we talk about sex, it can be a wonderful and positive part of our lives, and it can also be a place of violence and violation. We need to find out how to talk about all of that.

JS: What, for you, is at stake in this work?

MA: Acceptance. Humanity. Connection. The possibility of a life lived honestly and powerfully. World peace.

Chanel also asked me to reflect on what I write about in The Debrief, but I’m going to save that material for next week, which marks the one-year anniversary of this column! I figured that would be a good opportunity to look back on the year. You know, to debrief The Debrief…stay tuned.

Mimi Arbeit has a Ph.D. in child study and human development from Tufts University. Her research takes a skills-based approach to promoting adolescent sexuality development and sexual health, with specific attention to questions of gender justice and the experiences of queer and trans youth. She applies this work to sex education and sexual violence prevention in contexts such as public schools, college campuses and youth development programs. She wrote The Debrief, JewishBoston’s weekly column about sex, dating and relationships, from its inception in 2013 until moving to New York City in 2015.